The Miami Heat and the Midterm Elections

The Miami Heat, through ruthless off-season maneuvering, acquired the three top free agents, and arguably two of the best players in history: resigning Dwayne Wade and signing both Chris Bosh and Basketball Jesus LeBron James. The PR around this oscillated between the nightmarish (LeBron James' less than exciting hour-long ESPN special to publicly dump on Cleveland, which is should be remembered was filmed in front of a live audience who was silent during the obviously stunned fans) to the outlandish (the mawkish Welcoming Party that the three received in Miami). The arrogance was palpable. It was as if Miami, before the first ball was tipped-off, was claiming to the world that the won the Championship. Listen to the smug way that the three answer softball questions at the Welcome Party. The smugness is suffocating, choking out the rationality and asphyxiating history.

Does anyone remember when the Lakers, tired of losing in the playoffs, signed Karl Malone and Gary Payton to join Kobe Bryant and Shaq? It was not in the all too distant past that those four superstars, players in various stages of the career, came together in an effort to win championships. What happened? They won a decent amount of games (56-26), but lost to a team of unknown nobodies in the Championship, the Detroit Pistons, whose starting five featured Chauncey Billups, Rip Hamilton, Ben Wallace, and Teyshaun Prince. Sure, Detroit had Rasheed Wallace, but at that point in his career, who would have thought that the malcontent from Portland would ever amount to anything other than headaches, particularly with that bunch of young, untested players.

What Detroit proved that year, and what many teams immediately recognized, was that talent could not carry a team, but strong sense of team work, a good defense and solid coaching could.

Of course, when the Celtics picked up Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen and immediately started winning games, including one Championship, people sat up and started wondering about their "Big Three". Everyone wanted to have three huge names that would lead their team to a championship. Teams, like Miami, tired of losing and desperate to win back fans, gambled the future of the organization on three shoulders that already support swollen, egotistical heads.

Let's return to Miami for a second, a city that has had it's share of broken dreams. Anyone remember Harold Miner? Harold "Baby Jordan" Minor, whose outstanding ability to dunk lead the city into a fever of excitement? After leaving USC as their highest score in recorded history, Miner went on to play three unexciting low scoring seasons for Miami, and finished his career with a twelve minute scoreless appearance for the Cavs in 1996. Or remember when Miami won the Championship in 2006, only to have Wade seriously injure himself the following year? Or when they signed Shaq, and everyone figured they were a lock in the typically weak Eastern Division? Miami does. Miami clearly remembers. So when the opportunity came to sign three of the top players in the game, the hope that move generated was electric.

And what happened? They lost their first game to a much tighter Celtic team that showed they could play well together, played strong defense and were well coached. And it wasn't even close. Boston took the lead, and held it. Miami didn't come within less than five points the entire second half. Even the biggest doubters of Miami were shocked to see how easily this team rolled over to a more disciplined and cohesive team. Boston looked like Detroit in 2003 - a band of close-knit nobodies that dominated will and determination (though, it needs to be remembered that this team is not a team of nobodies, and could contend for the championship again). Even the next game's win against Philadelphia was nothing to write home about. Sure, there are only two games in the books, but these three alone should be better than 25th overall in points per game, 22nd overall in rebounds per game, and 27th overall in assists per game. The only top five stat they have is in points allowed per game, coming in 4th.

There was a noted silence among my friends on Facebook, normally pretty loud when it comes to sports matters, after Miami lost. It was hard to think of something to say in light of that entirely underwhelming performance. Again, even those that wished ill of the New York Yankees of basketball were stunned that these three could be this bad right out of the gate. Hell LeBron, on more than one occassion, has scored more than 50 points in a single game. So has Wade. What about all that hope? What about all that grandstanding and arrogance? Where was all that clout? This season might just kill a few Miami fans who are holding their breath for the hope of another championship.

But is this a fair reaction? Is Miami really under-performing or was there just too much hype to live up to? A look at the way Democrats are reacting to this Midterm election might shed light on this question.

In 2008, after Obama won the Presidential Election, there was a buzz among Democrats. I was in Carbondale, literally sitting on the edge of my couch, watching the election results come in (though it should be noted that my futon was not the most comfortable, and the edge, ironically had the most padding). Over the next few weeks, people spoke like the recently converted - excited talk about the future and its brightness. There was a fervor to young people that felt like this was the moment the country climbed out from underneath the strange and conflicted years of the Bush administration. It felt, as a young Democrat, that we could accomplish anything. The hope was overwhelming.

Now, nearly two years later, and that hope has faltered. In light of the recent bipartisan bickering, the split house sandbagging each other's attempts to get anything done, Democrats are starting to question the claims that the Obama people made. Can any change actually happen? Is it possible to do what he said he was going to do?

The highly discussed failure for a public health option, the long extraction from Iraq that was less of an extraction than expected, the continued fighting in Afghanistan, and the less than remarkable results of the economic stimulus plan which most Republicans harp on have led to some apathetic opposition from the Democrats. The Onion made a particularly pointed comment here in this satirical article which shows the Democrats hiding, running even, from their accomplishments. It might be that the Democratic politicians have lost faith in their own party. Or it might be that the Democrats have never been strong fighters, willing to tout their accomplishments and expose the weaknesses of the others. Maybe, amid all the muckraking of this midterm election following a grueling two year term, the Democrats have lost the will to fight against the willfully ignorant that see them as failures.

Maybe the Democrats and the Heat can learn something from each other. Firstly, it's never good to overhype something, as nothing ever lives up to fantastical expectations. Secondly, even though both have fallen short of their hype, that does not mean that either has been saddled with total failure. Like the Democrats, the Heat need to beef up on defense, come together as a team, and remember that they can achieve anything if the just try hard and play together.

Why I Hate Halloween

I really dislike Halloween, and for a man my age, an American and all, that is a rare thing to hear. For most adults, Halloween is awesome: a chance to dress up and party, looking like someone else. The creative among us will try and find the best, most relevant costume possible to attract the quiet admiration of those around us. Sounds like fun, sure.

But, I hate Halloween for the same reason I hate Valentine's Day: it's a day where people decide they can do something, and they are totally validated in that decision, and can refrain from doing that thing throughout the rest of the year.

Valentine's day is horrible; it's forced affection. Now, that alone, forcing us to love one another, is not a terrible thing in and of itself. The more love we can get in this world, the better. The problem here is that the love should not just be shown on the 14th of February. We should love each other all the time. Every day. I don't like the idea that someone can show me affection on one day, and that will be the extent of the affection shown. I want to be treated tenderly from my significant other every day of my life.

Plus, I don't like feeling that if I fail to materialistically fawn upon my loved one that I am a failure. I am a very generous person, often buying things I see for the people I care about. Just because I happen to or fail to on that one specific day does not make me a bad person. Really, what is so special about the 14th of February that deserves to be honored by presents? Nothing. Unless you count the slaughter of seven gang members in Chicago a worthy occasion.

Halloween is a similar case, but with less happy feelings associated. Halloween is an opportunity for women to wear their underwear outside. With the rise of the Sexy costume, wherein the wearer looks like a sexy version of anything - Sexy Cop, Sexy Nun, Sexy Snow White, even Sexy Picacchu (which, after Comic Con, I have seen enough of for my life) - women, particularly, are wearing less and less outside. Some will go as far as to wear lingerie, a set of cloth wings, and go as a fairy/angel/person in underwear and wings. And no one seems to raise much of an objection.

Now, wear one of these costumes to, say, the grocery store in August, and you will get some looks. People will talk. Mothers will avert their children's eyes. You may be asked to leave a family establishment so people can enjoy their food without looking at your underwear. But, for a few hours on Halloween, it's okay.

This is not a costume: this is an advertisement, and one that might not accurately represent the wearer. The clothing that we wear sends a signal to everyone around us. Clothing is a densely packed rhetorical act that speaks clearly of our likes, associations, interests, social class, and general attitudes towards the world. See a kid decked in black, long dark trench coat in the summer, and you are looking at a kid that wants to put distance between him- or herself and the world - someone who feels out-casted, othered. See a guy wearing a priestly garb, you assume he's a priest, he has a certain spirituality; or, if you are so inclined, you might see someone associated with child molestation.

So, what sort of message is Sexy Pikachu sending? A problematic one. Wearing a sexy version of a child's cartoon character is full of issues: sexualizing childhood, sexualizing innocent icons, perhaps sexualizing children.

But Halloween has demanded that of women. Women who don't dress in sexy versions of costumes are seen as prudish, or a femanazi, or some other sort of derogatory term. When really, said woman might not want to flaunt her goods, sending out inappropriate messages. If you want to leave little to the imagination, walking around on a typically cold night in October wearing your underwear as a costume, that's fine. But I don't feel people should have to do that just because the social norm seems to be leaning that way.

Plus, and this is just between you and me, I've had my heart broken on Halloween. In eighth grade, at the H.H. Humphrey school dance, I dressed as the Invisible Man. I thought it was great: classic idea, one of the great movie thrillers, pretty well known, and a complicated, but exciting costume. I bought like three rolls of surgical gauze, a pair of black sunglasses, borrowed my Great Uncle Bob's fedora and trench coat. I wore a suit underneath, like in the movies. I figured I was a shoe in for the contest. I proudly strut my costume in the parade of sorts they had for the judging. There was a set of three kids who dressed as street dancers. Suddenly, the busted out this synchronized dance, which involved some flipping and standing leap frogs. Suffice it to say, I lost. My intricate costume was no match for three kids who could break dance.

I felt this was unfair, as the ability to dance is not an inherent quality of a good costume. But thrilling dance moves garner attention, and this was more a popularity contest than an aesthetic contest. The injustice of it stings me, though, to this day.

Google Analytics

I never took stats in college. My math requirement was fulfilled by other more abstract classes like Calculus and Non-Euclidean Geometry. No really: I took a course on non-linear geometries, and though none of it has been useful in my life since the class finished, I still remember, vaguely, the axioms for the three line, three point space:
There are two points that exist in space.
There is a line that connects these two points.
There is a third spot on on this line.
Any two points must be connected by a line.
If I were sitting a few leagues under the sea and needed to sink a boat some miles off, I might find this proof useful, but I write about comics. To date, there has been no useable application for non-Euclidean geometry.

Back to my original point: I know nothing about useful math like statistics or economics. God help me when I have money to invest. Of course, it could be argued that my chosen career path will never present me with that problem. After all, I could invest my imaginary money any way I want to, buying unicorns off the penny stocks, or tracking the value of happiness trading. The rest of my life concerns the imagined, why shouldn't my finances?

So, this lack of pragmatic math makes my addiction to Google Analytics akin to a toddlers amusement with bright shiney objects: I don't know what I am looking at, but it looks really cool. See, I have been interested in knowing what sort of readership I have been getting from this page, and the lack of comments lead me, initially, to believe no one was reading. That I was dropping my words into the vacuum of the internet making neither a ripple nor a splash.

Once I installed the tracking code onto the page, I was amazed to find out I was getting a pretty steady increase in readership. I tend to get more readers around the time of publication, which makes sense, but I also tend to get random hits on my page (I think) between publications. Recently, on days of publication, I have been getting double digits hits, sometimes in the 40s and 50s. I feel like my child won class president in his Kindergarten class: certainly cool, but only relative to my narrow sphere of existence.

Of course, like most people in my field, numbers make little sense to me, so most of the information I have gleened from the page comes from starring at the charts and graphs that Google shows me. I am assuming when the chart spikes, that people are visiting my site, which is what I want to know: that someone clicked on my site. Google Analytics, though, wants to tell me if I have had visitors, repeat visitors, page visits, site hits, and so on. I'm not really sure what the difference is, so I tend to ignore that and make conclusions based purely on the pictures. This is how I can make claims about when people visit my site: there seems to be a spike around a certain day.

For example, when I click "page views" there is a significant spike around my birthday, which I attribute to people stopping by my Facebook page, seeing the link and clicking. That sort of connection makes sense to me. What is confusing, though, is that when I click visitors for that same day, it tells me I have only three visitors, all completely unique to the sight (those two numbers were the same; I put three and three together and got three). Without really understanding the data I am looking at, or how a statistician would interpret these numbers, I am left confused. Did three people look at 44 of the pages? Did 3 people come page to my page 44 times? It's just not clear what I am actually being told with these numbers.

So I tend not to try and link any of the charts, and instead I make conclusion based on each one individually. Here are some of the neat things I have found out by rummaging through the analytics:

1) From the Map Overlay, I have learned that from the time I installed the tracker (June 8th) until now I have had 182 visits to the page from 13 different countries. Obviously, knowing people in America and the UK, I wasn't surprised by that. Also, I have a friend in German (What up Sebastian) that follows this on RSS feed. What was more surprising where the three visits from Finland, and the single visits from Brazil, Russia, Lithuania, Sweden, the Netherlands and France. My Lithuanian visitor spent 15 minutes on the page, reading 10 different entries (if I am understanding the numbers correctly).

It also allows me to go deeper, examining the specific cities that visit my page the most. The winner in this category, I am making an assumption here, would be my brother-in-law Jason, who has visited my sight 52 times, almost twice that of the next closest visitor, the collected people of Chicago who have gone to my sight 28 times.

Another statistical oddity is that I have recieved three visits from Farmville, which to this point I was assuming existed only on Facebook, where people grow and harvest internet plants, spending hours at a time managing a virtual life, and in some cases, managing the virtual space far more effectively than the real space that encapsulates the virtual sphere.

One visitor from Berlin spent an hour on my site. This is remarkable only because said Berliner visited only once. He or she must have been impressed by what was there, which makes me wonder how what he saw that kept his attention for so long. If you read this again, let me know and I will try to cater to that request.

2) Beside showing me where people come from, Google also let's me know the primary language of the users, and not surprisingly, most people speak English, either American or British. I've also recieved visitors that spoke Finnish, German, Italian and something Google calls "pt-br".

3) While I recieved a lot of traffick on my birthday, September 22nd was the day I had the most unique visitors, or what I am assuming are computer signatures that have not come to my page previously. On that day, on Facebook, I advertised for this blog, and apparently some seventeen new people were interested in what I had to say.

I think this speaks to the power of Facebook as an advertisement tool. Considering I have just over 300 friends on Facebook (let me dust off my shoulders here), this is a 5% return on my investment (if I did my math right, and I am understanding the graph correctly). This is pretty amazing. Imagine if I were something more popular, like an electric car or a presidental candidate, something with a friends list in the hundred of thousands. Any messages conveyed there could reach a significantly higher audience than messages conveyed through other medias.

Of course, these are some bold claims to be making from a loose understanding of the graphs presented in from of me, but nonetheless, I feel there is something worth serious investigation here.

4) I have a fairly loyal readership. Granted, most of my visitors, 85 of them, have come once and never returned. 19 visitors, though, have returned between 9 and 14 times over the last couple of months. One visitor has come here more than 200 times. I feel I owe this person something, but there is no way I could tell who that is (though, again, if I am understanding the other numbers correctly, it's probably Jason).

5) Most visits to my page tage about 10 seconds or less time. Which makes sense. I imagine a lot of traffick I get from other countries is accidental, especially because I quote a song in the title. After that, the next highest collection of visit lengths ranges between ten and thirty minutes.

From this, it can be inferred that I get two types of visits: momentary or accidental visits, and actual readership. That feels good. I wish the actual readership would equal or exceed the accidental or passing readers, but one cannot be so lucky.


All in all, I find I waste a lot of free time clicking through all these images trying to imagine who you, the reader, are. I have a good indication, since some of my friends let me know. If you are a first time visitor, and this is your first time here, let me know. I would be interested to hear from new, strange readers.

The Biggest Little City in England

I have a lot of CDs, and in this day and age, I have burned them all onto my computer so that I could take most of them with me anywhere I went on my iPod. Because I walk a lot, travel a lot, and write a lot, I like to have the majority of my music with me at all time, and the iPod has been a godsend in that respect.

Until it stopped working. Those familiar with Apple know that the company prides itself on things not breaking down, and my iPod has not disappointed, working like a horse for the past three years. I tried my damnedest to get the machine working again, so that my walks through Aberystwyth, which are frequent, would have a soundtrack again. Something to distract me from the exhaustion I face walking up and down the hills. Sadly, there was nothing I could do. I needed the help of an Apple Genius.

The nearest Apple store as the crow flies would probably be Cardiff. Unfortunately the only way to get to Cardiff from here is a twice daily bus that requires a lot of attention paid to the watch, or going into England, to head back south and west into Wales. The easiest store to get to is in Birmingham, the second largest city in the UK behind London.

To put things in perspective for my American readers, London has about 12 million people in the city center and surrounding area. This would make it about the size of LA, without all the other surrounding towns in the LA area. Birmingham, as the second largest city, comes in just over 1 million people in the center and surrounding areas, making it about the size of Dallas, minus about 200,000 people. Birmingham would be just shy of the top ten largest cities in America.

That said, Birmingham was very surprising.

There are two train stations off the line I came in on; one conveniently goes to the airport, the other drops the riders at a heavily trafficked station in the center of the city. From there, I was able to walk across the street to a really huge shopping mall, in which was contained the Apple Store at which I had an appointment. It might be that the centralized nature of Birmingham that allows for one Apple store to service the entire population, or it might be that little lies between the Midlands (Birmingham and the surrounding area) and London, requiring fewer large shopping malls; regardless of the reason, the Bull Ring shopping mall was the most packed place I have ever been to, including the nearly 30 years I have spent in the Chicagoland area, the couple years I spent in the city and my trips to London, Paris and Frankfurt. There are times I see pictures of people milling about Tokyo or Beijing, I wonder how anyone could choose to live stacked up on top of each other like crates in a factory or fish about to be plucked from the sea, surrounded by an ever-shrinking net.

I have found that I lose my patients for large crowds as I get older. When I was younger, I used to love going to the Taste of Chicago, getting smashed into large crowds all enjoying a singular experience. I would press into the compact mass of people at the front of a stage to see Green Day or Godsmack. I lived like puppies with my brothers growing up. In short, space never much mattered to me. Until I lived in Monmouth, then Carbondale and DeSoto. There, I lived with space. I could drive down the main drag in Monmouth some mornings, and see one, maybe two cars total. On some later trips between Galesburg and Monmouth, my headlights might be the only ones blazing down the highway.

DeSoto was probably the ultimate in reclusive living. The town itself had 300 people, most of which were elderly, living in small two bedroom slab houses. My part of DeSoto was relatively newer, and set back from the main roads. In the little subdivision, my apartment was one of maybe thirty houses, all small families or quiet renters. At night, I would take my dog for a walk and not see another person. When the ice-storm hit and froze people into their houses, I walked the icy streets with my dog, enjoying the quiet of the streets.

Suffice to say, my experience at Bull Ring was anxious, at best. As I crested the escalator to the third floor, I tried to stop and see if the Apple Store was behind me (which it was) but was carried by the foot traffic into a different corridor. The hallways were filled wall to wall with consumers milling about listlessly between the stores. Luckily, the British are polite to a fault, so even when I was clearly aimlessly wandering around, no one shivved me.

I managed to get into the Apple store on my second time through the mall, but I found not respite from the crowds there. It was literally difficult to impossible when trying to walk around the store. It was not Apple's fault as they arranged their tables in to parallel rows that were perpendicular to the wall. One should have been able to run full speed from the door to the cashiers without stopping to slow down. Unfortunately with the people milling about as they were, walking for more than a step was near impossible, let alone finding someone to help me. Again, though, because the British are considerate people, there was little fighting. I've been to the mall at Christmas time, and in similar situations, Americans are less friendly.

Once I got my iPod, I was ready to get on the train, leaving a trail of burning destruction in the rubble of Birmingham. I was tired of the people, the experience, the expensive consumer goods for which I had no money (£55 for a vest!). I saw daylight and made a break for it, finding that I had exited the mall on the opposite side I entered, leaving a long walk to the train. This was serendipitous, though, as I saw one of the neatest sights ever: an old church surrounded by this gleaming mass of modern architecture. Smack between the mall and an open air market sat a Gothic-style, red rock church, complete with steeple and buttresses. That's one of the neat things about England, a country with more than two-hundred years of history: one often finds modernity juxtaposed with tradition. Here was a church from the early 1900's smack in the middle of a more modern, church of capitalism.

In the open air, I felt less claustophobic and decided to amble about for a while. I had purchased a map book from the train station, and had a few hours before I needed to leave. I took off in a Northerly direction. This was a good choice, as I stumbled in the city center, which was rife with history and cool looking buildings.

The Birmingham town hall is modeled after the Pathenon, sitting on the Western edge of the picturesque Victoria Square. On the Northern edge sat the original Council House, which is still in use today, though partly as an Art Gallery and History Museum. Walking into Victoria Square was a lot like what it looks like when people walk into generic European squares in Europe. The places was dotted with statues and monuments, tourists and locals sat about the stairs and benches, eating or taking pictures, and people meandered about.

Interestingly, Victoria Square has sat there for some time, the intersection of New Street, Colmore Row and Paradise Street. The Square was made official in 1901 after the death of Queen Victoria, removing a church that had sat there for some time. In 1993, Diana, Princess of Wales rehabbed the whole bit, commissioning several new statues. This site is considered the center of Birmingham, and most of the street signs point towards it in some capacity.

After I walked around the square for a while, I wandered down the very ritzy shops of New Street, before I had dinner at a charming little Italian joint. Here again, though, I was struck by the mass of crowds, as this must have been one of the few places with open restaurants in the area. Every place was filled to brimming, including the pubs which leaked out onto the streets. After a short wait of 15 minutes or so, I was seated and enjoyed a nice meal of garlic cheese bread sticks and a mushroom risotto.

After that, I had to head back to catch the last train out of the city at 8:30 pm. Had I missed that, I would have been stuck in Birmingham for the night. By that point in the day, though, I had had enough, and was looking for the solitude of Aberystwyth.

For My Grandma

I was in Chicago for most of the summer, and because of this, I didn't write many blog entries. Really, the world was not too entirely disrupted. My blog has a limited readership, and there are plenty of more savvy writers out there to fill the Internet.

Or so I thought. When I saw my Grandma for the 4th of July, a large party that drew a lot of second cousins and distant relatives from all over Chicago and other places, we talked quietly about my experiences here in Wales. It got quiet for a minute, and she said, "You don't write those letters anymore."
"My blog, Gram? Oh that. Yeah. Well, I'm here now. There's not much to say."
"I know. I just miss hearing about your life and all."
See, I have a limited number of email addresses I can have this blog automatically sent to, and my Aunt's is one. She had been dutifully printing off the entries about my exploits in a foreign country and reading them to my grandma, and evidently she liked it. And because I had been writing regularly, she had gotten used to hearing from me.

My Aunt pulled me aside later at the same party.
"You don't write much anymore," she told me, which I knew.
"Yeah, well, the blog was about my experiences abroad, and I'm not having those right now. So...I think I'm on break for the summer."
She nodded at me as if I had answered the question "What is two plus two?" by explaining the signing of the Magna Carta.
"Yeah. But your Grandma was asking if you would write. She really liked hearing from you."

It had seemed, as is always the case, that your biggest fan is usually the quietest one. My humble little journal gets read from time to time, usually by my friends off Facebook, or Erika because I demand her to. Occasionally, people tell me that it's interesting or funny, but rarely do people ask when I am going to write again. However, silently, my Grandma was wishing I would so that she could hear about my life.

Which is not to say that my life is interesting, and my Grandma likes to read compelling narratives. It's not like I am scaling mountains, detailing my fights with my Sherpa and thin air. I wrote an entire entry about shopping for pants, for Christ's sake. But here's my Grandma, asking for more.

And here is what makes my Grandma special: it doesn't matter if I just cured cancer or found a well-fitting pair of Chinos, to her it is immensely interesting. When we were kids, my Grandma sat at the head of the family, though not at the head of the table. In my parent's house, there was a high, wing-backed purple chair, and I don't know anyone who sat in it more regularly than my Grandma, and that includes my family that lived with the chair. It always seemed to important a chair to sit in. My Grandma, though, fit in it perfectly.

In the solar system, all the planets revolve around the sun whose gravity spins the planets and whose sunshine gives, at least Earth, the warmth needed to sustain life. In much the same way, my father, aunts and uncles revolved around my Grandma, and all my brothers, sisters and cousins revolved around them like satellites and moons. Everything that I am today is because of her, directly or indirectly. She shone her light on my father, making him the man that he was, and in turn I was bathed in her reflected light to act as I am today.

So, here's one just for you Grandma. I hope that you can hear it at some point, knowing that almost everything I do is in hopes that I won't disappoint you.

Standards and Measurements

As with any move, some of the translations have little to do with language. For example, how many milliliters make up an ounce? How many cups in a liter (or litre)? I was struck by my complete lack of ability to translate between the metric measuring system and the standards based measuring system when I went to buy a measuring cup today.

Granted: most of my cooking is done with relative measurements. If I am cooking for one person, I assume one chicken breast is enough. Or a certain measurement of pasta is fitting for a certain amount of water, and both are relative to the number of people eating. Even for most things that require measurements, I needed just to know what one unit would look like, and then I could take a relative measurement: to make a roux I needed to mix equal portions flour and butter. If those portions are tablespoons, hogshead or milliliters, it didn't matter. They just simply needed to be the same.

It only became problematic when I wanted to make risotto. Risotto is not the easiest thing to cook, and requires a lot of ratios and stirring. That said, it's not really all that difficult to make either. With practice, and few crunchy risotto dishes, anyone can make it. Most risottos require a three to one ration of risotto to cooking liquid. So, if one were to make a cup of risotto, they would need three combined cups of liquid, be that liquid stock, wine, water, squid ink, etc. I find two parts chicken stock and one part wine to one part arborio rice works the best; white wine gives it a lighter flavor good for chicken or vegetable risottos (like pumpkin or butternut squash; now that I am saying it, though, I bet a little apple cider would be nice to for the rooty, autumnal vegetables), and red wine works well for beef or mushroom risottos and give the dish a nice purpley-pink color.

It would seem like that the measuring cup I used would not be a problem, and for the most part that was true. The issue arises when I combine the fact that I cook for myself with the tricky issue of the exact specifications for making risotto. Usually, when I cook for myself, I use a half cup of rice. Now, in Wales, quality arborio rice is not cheap. I didn't want to make more than I could eat, but I needed a good sized portion to act as my dinner. So I needed something that had American cups as a standard, not the smaller British cups or the unfathomable metric measurement.

It's not that I have anything against metric. For cooking, especially, the measuring system makes sense since it is based off water: the zero of the system is when water turns to ice, and the 100 measure is where water turns to steam; thus most measurements are based off where water ceases to be water, or where water changes it's physical state (Wikipedia tells us that by contemporary standards, the Celsius unit is based off of the difference between absolute zero and the freezing point of some specially prepared water; more on absolute zero later). This makes a lot more sense than Fahrenheit, which is based in God knows what. In Fahrenheit, as any junior high science teacher will tell you, water freezes at 32 and boils at 212. This, if America really thought about it, made no sense. What matter changes physical properties at 0 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit? Nothing that the average cook uses (the answer, again according to Wikipedia, is a brine made of water, ice, ammonium chloride and salt which freezes at zero Fahrenheit; of course, we all come in contact with this substance routinely, so using that as a standard for a system of measurement makes sense...).

That said, I have used the completely ridiculous Standard Measuring System, developed, mind you, by the Brits, for my whole life. I know that four cups make a quart and that four quarts make a gallon. 16 ounces make a cups. Great. I know that potatoes bake at 400 degrees above which point a random brine solution freezes. I know that I use 1/2 cup of dry rice to make risotto, and I had no idea how many milliliters that might be (236.588, roughly).

The whole problem with Celsius and Fahrenheit rears its ugly head when I look to see what the temperature is outside. The Weather Channel's UK sister site, I found, will list the temperature in Fahrenheit for me, but I didn't see that right away. Nor is this readily available when I am away from my computer. Of course, I could remember that C = 5(F -32)/9. Then, it's just some simple math, which my American education, heavy on the calculator, has deprived me the ability of performing in my head. Either way, when the British say that it should be nice because it will be nearly 25 degrees out, I silently wonder what sadist finds 25 degrees Fahrenheit comfortable. 25 Celsius is actually a quite comfortable 77 degrees Fahrenheit (F = 9C/5 + 32). Now in Chicago, when temperatures get below 0, I start to worry about frostbite, where here, below zero puts it in the thirties, a mild winter by some Northern Illinois standards.

And really, it's a question of relativity. I have associated certain circumstances with a number. Unfortunately, my number is relative to a liquid that I have no regular contact, and thus is meaningless outside of my experience. Though, it should be said that even the very rational Celsius is not perfect. After all, change the atmospheric settings, and water boils and freezes at different temperatures. And since some places don't exist at the requisite 1 atmosphere of pressure (I'm looking at you Colorado), this system is as meaningless as Fahrenheit is. There needs to be a more objective system of measurement, right?

And there is: absolute zero, the theoretical point at which all matter has lost it's energy. Or in simpler terms: space. The vacuum of space is as close as we are going to get to absolute zero. And this unchanging and harsh circumstance is the perfect standard for Earthly measurements. The Kelvin and Rankine systems are designed to shift the two standard measurements to absolute zero, which happens to be 273 degrees below 0 Celsius. Our future generations should be taught one of those temperature systems so later they can think to themselves, how many degrees warmer than the vacuum of space do I need to set the oven to boil water? 573 degrees Kelvin, of course.

Plus baking a potato at 860 degree Rankine makes it seem like cooking is a far more dangerous process than it actually is. And, in the end, that's what we all want: to sound like we risked life and limb for a delicious meal.